


Why?

by Carpe_History



Category: Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 03:17:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1140794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carpe_History/pseuds/Carpe_History
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She didn't tell him. Alek wanted to know why, but she would have to wake up first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why?

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this before Goliath came out several years ago. 
> 
> I don't own Leviathan.

"Why?" Alek asked. He looked down at the girl who was his best friend. "Why didn't you tell me?"  
  
            She didn't respond. She couldn't respond. She looked as if she was asleep on that bed not drugged in to unconsciousness. She was still, like she had been for the past four days since the accident. At times, she talked in her sleep about Glasgow and someone named Jasper whom Alek remembered might be her brother, and in others, yelling and screaming about her Da. Sometimes she hazily responds to conversations happening around her then falling back into the death like sleep. The drugs she was given were apparently too strong for someone her size. 

            All of this was because of the Accident. 

            The Accident replayed itself in Alek's mind. The Germans, really angry Germans with really good guns, chasing them all though out the city, only letting up when they were sure they had stuck one of Alek's party. Alek shook his head to clear his thoughts of the smell of smoke and the sound of gunfire and the feeling of panic. 

            But it had been Dylan who they had struck. The wound had gone right though her upper shoulder. Thankfully missing any bones but defiantly messing with the muscles there. There had been so much blood.

            It was then when he had found out. His best friend, the man who knew all of his secrets.... wasn't a man at all. Dylan was actually a girl. 

            Alek understood why she did it on some level. The whole dressing up like a boy to fly thing. Whenever Dylan had talked about flying he (No,  _She_ ) had gotten this look on his face. The look Alek was pretty sure he, himself, wore whenever he piloted a Walker. A look that said passion and drive on a level that most people would never came close to understanding.

            So he wasn't angry over that. Anymore. At first, Alek had been very angry over Dylan's true gender. Girls shouldn’t be on ships; shouldn’t be involved in a war in anyway shape or form. They should be kept safe at home, not in the middle of a warzone. But after two days of serious thinking (and a very long, _scary_ talk to Dr. Barlow) Alek decided that Dylan's true gender had nothing to do with how good Dylan was as an Airman. She had saved him with her quick thinking and skills many times.

            And that talk with Dr. Barlow had been so terrifying that Alek felt he was lucky to have survived it.

            He still thought she was a better soldier than he was.

Now he was just tired. No longer angry but not sure what to feel other than confusion.

            Dylan, Alek paused in his mental ramblings, he kept referring her as Dylan but Alek wonder what her true name was. He thought it was probably not pretty in the traditional sense but something still unique in its own way. He was sure it fit her.

            But that still left him with the question of 'Why?'

            Why the name Dylan? Why the Air Corps? Why the Leviathan? Why didn't she tell him? Why didn't she trust him?

            He had told her all of his secrets. He thought he could trust her no matter what Volger says. But she did not trust him enough for her secret. And that bothered him much more than her being a girl ever did. He felt as if the thought of lack of trust should have made him angry but Alek could not bring up enough anger to really matter. All he mainly felt was sadness and hurt and some other emotion that he could not figure out.

            Only Dr. Barlow and Volger and a civilian doctor (who thought that Dylan was his sister) know about Dylan. The four of them had been together with a dozen or so guards from the Leviathan when it happened.  They were in port in Tokyo getting supplies before going up to Kyoto when the Germans had spotted them.  In the panic and confusion of the resulting firefight the guards from the Leviathan had gotten separated from Alek and his group.

            So no one from the ship had seen Dylan get shot. And for that Alek was thankful. If this had happened on board then the ship's doctor would have been the one to fix the hole in her chest as a result of a bullet from a German gun. Instead a civilian doctor who was paid off to tell the crew that the Mr. Sharp was going to be fine.

            And now Dr. Barlow was the only one to treat Dylan. Claiming that the civilian doc had given her very specific instructions and she wanted to make sure they were done to the letter. Luckily she was known to be picky enough that this lie was believed.

            "Why?" He asked again. "Why, after all we've been through, did you not tell me this? About who you really are?"

            She stirred. Not fully awake and not fully off the drugs also. Alek had seen this happen many times since the accident. She sometimes talked. This time Alek thought she would say something about Glasgow or Jasper, like all other times. But then her eyes fluttered open and Alek heart jumped into his throat. That was something that hadn’t happened before. She was awake!

            She looked, with glazed over eyes, up at the prince and smiled in a way that broke Alek's heart. It was filled with love and acceptance. She said sleepily, "you'd... break my... heart or had ta run'a... mile. I don't think... I would've survived... either."

            She drifted off back into the drugged sleep that allowed healing and left Alek in an even worse mindset than before.

            "Shit." Alek breathed in German. 

 


End file.
